Surgeon at Arms

the snob you got nowhere.
    ‘You’ll remember, Arthur, that Sir Graham has an interest in our travel business.’
    ‘Smart lad.Going like a bomb, that little company. It’s only the beginning, mind. Once these bloody restrictions come off, the market’ll be wide open.’
    ‘I hope I’ll see something back for my money,’ said Graham, for the sake of making conversation. ‘It isn’t much fun paying it all away in taxes.’
    ‘Oh, taxes,’ said Arthur King, contemptuously. ‘There’s another little idea of ours. Shall we tell him, Charles?’
    ‘Television,’ said Lord Cazalay.
    ‘There’s not much future in that surely?’ Graham looked surprised. ‘Nobody will be able to afford the sets.’
    ‘Another ten years and there’ll be one in every home,’ said Arthur King confidently. ‘Just like the toilet.’ Graham’s instruction in the mysteries of commerce was interrupted by the arrival of Liz.
    Liz was an actress. Not a particularly well-known one—indeed, discovery of her name generally called for a fairly close reading of the programme. She was in one of the postwar revues, with a small part which hardly justified her style of living. She had an enviable knack of getting to know the people who mattered, and an even more valuable one of dropping them before they ceased to. She was a big woman, red-haired, with enormous teeth. Graham supposed she must be well past forty. He had met her a few weeks before, in the dressing-room of an actor whose noble features had illuminated the musical-comedy stage for some decades, and now, with his assistance, seemed likely to continue lightening it for some decades more. Graham had begun to move among theatrical people, even adopting some of their little affectations. It pleased him to see himself as part of their scene, to understand their momentously whispered trivial gossip. He found Liz heavy going, but a man must have a companion, and he was never one to play the monk.
    ‘Graham, darling, how wonderful.’ Liz embraced him warmly, simultaneously managing to take a glass from her host. ‘And Arthur, bless you, how nice. Thank you so much for all those lovely nylons. You are clever. They’re divine.’
    ‘Glad you liked them,’ said Arthur briefly.
    ‘Graham, tell me all you’ve been up to,’ she invited, though they had parted less than forty-eight hours before.
    ‘I went to a party with a lot of my old patients.’
    ‘Those poor boys! They must look so peculiar, all together.’
    ‘They do, but they’ve given up thinking about it, which was the object of the exercise.’
    ‘How on earth could they manage to give up thinking about themselves? I should feel dreadful, quite an outcast, if I had the merest scar.’
    ‘They manage it because I always made the effort of having people treat them like normal human beings, not as something out of a circus.’
    Liz gave a faint smile. He looked in danger of being serious again. He really was a dreadful bore when he got serious. If he went on mixing with all those awful deformed creatures, he really shouldn’t bother everyone by insisting on talking about them in quite repulsive detail.
    ‘Let’s go and grab something to eat,’ Liz suggested. ‘I think they’ve even got lobster.’
    After ten minutes she said to him, ‘You are grumpy tonight, I must say. What’s the matter?’
    ‘Oh, nothing.’An uneasiness had settled on him. These people really were rather dreadful, he told himself. Though why should he complain? There was wine, lobster, and bright company, all hard to come by. ‘Shall we go on?’ he asked her abruptly. ‘To a nightclub or somewhere?’
    ‘But darling! I’ve only just arrived.’
    ‘I’m feeling restless.’
    ‘Oh, all right, then. You do carry on peculiarly sometimes, darling, don’t you?’
    ‘Yes, I know I do. Very peculiarly. All my life. It’s a bit late in the day to change my habits, I’m afraid.’
    ‘I see you’re in your interesting mood,’ she told him. It was too bad, but she had to put up with it. He seemed very wealthy.
    The nightclub, like a dozen others sprouting after the war, was in a basement near Piccadilly. Graham signed an order for a bottle of gin, which was supposed to be sealed and reproduced at the guest’s next visit, but somehow never was. There was a rumba band and they danced for a few minutes on the overcrowded floor. ‘Let’s go home,’ said Graham. ‘This place is suffocating.’
    ‘Darling, what’s wrong with you